Total pages in book: 138
Estimated words: 128260 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 641(@200wpm)___ 513(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 128260 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 641(@200wpm)___ 513(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
“They were being trafficked?” she asked warily.
I nodded. “Yeah. Girls as young as six were in that room, fated to become some sick fuck’s sexual plaything.”
She stared at me silently, eyes wide with shock and sadness.
“One of the girls, Ara, had seen a chance for escape when they threw some dinner in for them. The guards caught her and they raped her—raped her in any and every manner they could. They hurt and degraded her in ways I still don’t want to think about.” My voice faded at the end as I swallowed down the lump that always formed when I thought of Ara, of what she’d endured in punishment for her attempt at freedom. “They all took turns with her and then they beat her so severely that she was barely conscious. We learned the details later, when our translator talked to some of the other women being held.”
Tears had gathered in Grace’s eyes, and she grabbed my hand and held it to her heart as I continued to talk.
“After we killed the traffickers and found Ara, we carried her outside and we cleaned her wounds as best as we could with what we had. But the internal damage was too much. She needed a hospital and we had no way to get her to one. We gave her morphine and we stayed with her through the night, taking turns holding her hand and telling her stories—any story we could think of. As the sun started to rise, it was my turn to hold her hand and I told her about you, how I thought of you every morning when the sun came up in the sky. And I swear, she smiled at me, Grace. She looked right in my eyes, and she smiled. And then, then she was gone.”
“Oh God,” Grace said on a pained whisper.
I stared out the window, a stark desert appearing before me as I recalled that morning. I remembered the way the light had reflected back at me in Ara’s eyes, a young girl from a distant land, who’d slipped from this world, her hand gripping mine, as orange streaks blazed across the sky.
“How do you handle that memory, Carson? How do you get over that?” Grace finally asked.
I thought about her question. I thought about how you ship off to fight for your country, and no one ever tells you that the inhumanity you might witness will seep into your very soul and irrevocably change who you are. They never tell you that a thousand miles and many years away, a singular moment will suddenly come back to you—where you were, what you felt, what you saw, that one frame on repeat, over and over and over. They never tell you that it will be so strong that you’ll want to fall to your knees and grip your head and reject living in a world where horrors like that one occur, and the sun keeps rising and setting over and over day after day.
“I’ll never get it out of my head. I’ll never get over it,” I said. “But I’m okay with that. I prefer it to forgetting. Ara lived it. She held on until that first ray of light shattered the darkness around her. I like to think, to her, it was a small piece of freedom, that light. Or maybe I just hope so. But the very least I can do is remember.”
Grace released a staggered breath. She picked up my hand and held it to her heart and then brought her lips to my scarred palm, kissing it softly.
I watched her, pain etched into her expression. The clear heartbreak she felt for a young girl she was only hearing a story about moved me and brought me peace. When she leaned back, she asked, “What happened to the other victims?”
“They were all from small, poor villages in the surrounding areas. The townspeople helped locate their families and get them back where they belonged. They had mostly been told that there was a housekeeping job or something like that in a nearby town or city. That’s the usual MO when it comes to trafficking. In some cases, families even sell their daughters into what they believe will be a better situation than they can provide.”
“And Ara’s family?” she asked quietly.
“We had to leave before Ara’s family was located, but the townspeople thought they knew where they were and promised to take her body to them.”
Grace put her head on my chest and her arms around my waist and squeezed me gently. God, it felt good to talk about this with her and let her comfort seep into my heart. The guys and I had talked about it afterward, but it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t the same as being wrapped in Grace’s arms as she took part of my pain and made it her own. I didn’t want her to hurt, but to share my scars with another human was a relief that I not only wanted, but had needed so much..